With Astrid there is this sensation of invisibility. After a couple of days in her room I feel an agreeable fuzziness developing around my skull, as if my identity is actually becoming unfocused, so it’s a surprise to encounter the distinct lines of my face in the bathroom mirror. For the first time in my life, I remain largely insusceptible to the temptations of jealousy, which would involve the assertion of my ego to a prominence I don’t feel, currently, it merits. I am anyway familiar with its special contortion: hating those who precede me, meaning I must hate her (or at least her judgement) for allowing them close, meaning I must hate myself for occupying the same category. This logic asks me to be the exception to everything, when I find I want to absorb those names, to become larger than them, to incorporate them all, impressionistically, in her memory. To be interchangeable like this seems fine, and in her bed, luxuriously blurred, I finally feel able to author an anonymity that is believable.